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When you live in the oldest home in Columbus, you get used to the attention.

“I’ve seen school buses idling outside, with kids staring out the windows,” said George Ziegler,
who for a decade has occupied an astonishing piece of the city’s history.

With its rough-hewn log construction, Ziegler’s home looks plucked out of a pioneer wilderness —
which, in a sense, it was.

The cabin was built in 1804 midway between the emerging settlements of Franklinton and
Worthington. Unlike older homes that have been altered beyond recognition, Ziegler’s cabin is
unmistakably historic.

Inside, the walls, ceilings and floors are solid oak and walnut, darkened and weathered with
time but otherwise in remarkable condition. Wide wood planks form the floor; low timber beams hold
up the second-floor loft; and a massive stone slab, rubbed smooth from use, creates the hearth.

The windows are small, and the fireplace is huge.

Its unaltered appearance is one of several remarkable facts about the log home.

The cabin was built eight years before Columbus was founded. The next-oldest continually
occupied home in the city is a full 15 years younger.

Surprisingly, the cabin doesn’t sit in the oldest part of the city, Franklinton, but is instead
nestled among student rentals in the University District. In its 208 years, the home has been owned
by only two families.

“You can go into that house, and it looks just the same as it used to,” said Doreen Uhas Sauer,
a historian and president of the Columbus Landmarks Foundation. “It’s amazing that there has been
that much care taken of it all those years.”

Even many of the furnishings remain unchanged. A photo taken about 1910 shows a boy sitting on
one of two tree-stump stools next to the fireplace. More than a century later, the stools sit in
the same spot.

The cabin was built by David Beers, who settled in central Ohio after living for years with his
Indian captors. Beers built the 18-by-24-foot cabin near what is now High and Dodridge streets.

Almost a century later, adventurer Conn Baker moved the cabin to its Norwich Avenue site and
combined it with another cabin, reportedly from the Canton area.

The home passed through the family to Baker’s grandson, Conn Baker Gibney, who died in 2006. The
Gibney family still owns the home, and Ziegler, Gibney’s partner, occupies it.

Generations have lived in the home, but the first Conn Baker permeates it more than others.

Baker, a figure straight out of a Kipling tale, was a world-record bicycle racer known as the
Columbus Flyer, a circus performer billed as the amazing Diavolo and a distinguished artist who
ended his career as a state auditor.

Several paintings belonging to Conn Baker and his brother, Herman Baker, still hang in the home.
Posters printed on silk from Baker’s circus tour of India adorn the walls, and shelves are covered
with ivory and brass souvenirs from India.

“He was a very colorful figure,” Ziegler said.

Ziegler admires the house’s history but doesn’t romanticize it.

A 200-year-old cabin isn’t the easiest home to live in. The home has electricity, a furnace, air
conditioning and plumbing, but most of the walls are exposed logs, without insulation.

“It’s very cold in the winter,” Ziegler said as he sat down at the kitchen table recently. “And
it’s very dark in here.”

The cabin has been expanded to 1,800 square feet, with two bedrooms and one bath. The kitchen is
dated, but Ziegler is cautious about renovating a piece of history.

“We’ve talked about redoing the kitchen, but we’re not sure what we’d find when we started,” he
said.

Local historians know of no other occupied home that comes close to the cabin in age, but they
can’t say definitively that it is the oldest.

A home of roughly the same vintage can be found on Gift Street in Franklinton, the first part of
the city to be settled. But that is little more than a shack under restoration.

Other old homes, including one on Nelson Road and a few on Olentangy River Road, are newer by at
least 15 years.

“This is the oldest house in Franklin County as far as we know,” Uhas Sauer said. “There may be
parts of things left, a stable or a spring house, that are older but not an occupied home.”

In honor of the city’s bicentennial, the Columbus Landmarks Foundation is soliciting information
from residents who might know of other old buildings.

In the meantime, Ziegler will continue fielding the queries, many of them from students who pass
the curious cabin every day.

“They ring bells, leave notes. ‘Can I see your house? It’s so interesting.’ I say, yes, it is
interesting, but you can’t see it.”